PRL has NO IMPACT on your NATIVE network coverage. It only affects ROAMING capabilities.

People think, "They built a new tower by my house, so I need a new PRL so I can pick it up."

FALSE. PRLs are done by SID (System ID) and only affects
how your phone roams.

Now that Verizon is using LTE, SIM cards take the place of *228 and OTASP/PRL updating is obsolete.

LTE is the natural evolutionary path for WCDMA (UMTS, HSDPA, HSPA+), which evolved from GSM. All of those technologies have had dynamically updated roaming abilities. Users didn't even need to think about it.

The natural evolutionary path for CDMA 1xEV-DO would be EV-DV... but Qualcomm scrapped it because the world (including Verizon) chose LTE. Verizon wanted to be apart of the world standard. So, naturally... customers used to CDMA and it's practices are going to be confused about these things.